a shadow sits in a meadow. you can’t see its face or its arms or legs or anything. just a shadow, long and tall. in its hand sits a flower. you don’t know what kind. one by one, the petals start to fall. the hands are long and skeletal. nothing but bone and no skin.

‘SHE LOVES ME’

somebody kill me. please. the wilting flower by your nightstand decrees it. it’s wanted out for centuries. be merciful, for once. just kill the thing that only lives for the taste of your skin.

‘SHE LOVES ME NOT’

i talk to flowers when i’m lonely. and starving. and starved. i would like to bite their pretty little heads off. i dream of plucking off those petals one by one. and then eating the stem.

‘SHE LOVES ME’

i think we all have something like that. something we’d like to pluck the wings off of. something we’d like to eat, feeling the crunch of bones and stems and roots on our teeth. 

i fear that maybe we don’t. maybe i’m just a fucking weirdo with an empty stomach and twice as many worries as i should have at my age. maybe i do want to eat the pretty things, only because i know they’ll taste better than simply eating myself.

‘SHE LOVES ME NOT’

i’m starving. in case you haven’t noticed. in case the discussions of food and eating and empty stomachs had been cleverly disguised as something other than what they are. 

god, beautiful is always appetizing. it is always tasteful. most people’s beautiful things aren’t flowers, though. they don’t want to fuck the flowers. they don’t want to fuck the sunset. they want to fuck the thing with arms and legs and teeth and smile. it’s strange. they all want to eat her

just to throw her back up again. it’s all just cravings. everything tastes the same when you’re hungry.

‘SHE LOVES ME’

there’s a pier by the beach that i head to every spring. i sit on the riverbank and watch the dirty water lick up against the rocks. i feel disgusting for every thought in my head. i consume the riverbank with my rot. spring sours. turns yellow and bad. the power is off and the milk curdles in the refrigerator. 

i take off my clothes and lie under the murky layers and feel cold for the first time in my life. in this cold, my rot warms me. my mind does not purify, but it does lie. it tells me i am not at fault. that i can swallow everything they shove down my throat. even the truth.

‘SHE LOVES ME NOT’

i’m starved. lying decrepit on a bedside. coughing flowers. i am staring at you and you are staring away. no. she is staring away. the woman with a flower for a head. she is far away and i am reaching for her and then my hand crumbles to bone. 

i beg for help, curled in a fetal position under the covers, under the hospital blanket, under the fertile dirt. i beg for something, just something, to eat. the petals drip from my mouth like spit. in hindsight, it’s no wonder you turn away in shame.

‘SHE LOVES ME’

this is embarrassing; 

loving; 

not being loved. picking flowers like children. i should be making stew. i should be thinking deep thoughts. 

i should not be hunched over the memory of somebody who mistakes lovesickness for disease. 

i should be running through fields and jumping over hills and i should have enough strength left in my body to come running back.

‘SHE LOVES ME NOT’

i make it halfway over the hill before my brain gives out and my body comes tumbling after. 

i was right. beauty is delicious. right before i fell, i could’ve sworn i tried to lick the sun straight out of the sky. it just reminded me so much of your skin. of you.

‘SHE LOVES ME’

i am lying in a field of flowers and i am gone. 

and i am here. 

and i am done and i am nothing and i am come alive again. buried beneath the earth. killed by a love but not by a lover.

and god, oh god, i am so very lonely.

‘SHE LOVES ME NOT’

you spot her on that hill, that girl swaying in the wind seven sizes too thin. you spot her and the frostbite on your lips widens. her shoulders are shivering. it’s sweet, really. in this light, she almost appears to be laughing. maybe it’s just something you said.